1. GMA Showcases Moore's Mocking of Bush's 7 Minutes in Classroom ABC's Good Morning America on Tuesday spent about seven minutes showcasing how Michael Moore's Bush-bashing movie, Fahrenheit 9-11, highlights how after President Bush was informed a second plane had hit the World Trade Center, he stayed in front of elementary school kids for another seven minutes. "Was valuable time wasted?" asked Charlie Gibson at the top of the June 22 show. Diane Sawyer imparted great meaning to the time passage: "It was seven minutes in the life of a President, seven minutes in the history of the nation, it's... continue reading
1. Couric and Stephanopoulos Tout Bill Clinton Book as "Candid" Just as they absurdly greeted Hillary Clinton's book a year ago as "candid" about how she only learned after eight months how Bill Clinton had lied to her about Lewinsky (on the June 4, 2003 Today Katie Couric gushed about how Mrs. Clinton was "very candid about a very personal matter"), some network stars have been equally gullible about Bill Clinton's new book. Couric touted at the top of Monday's Today: "True confessions. A candid President Clinton talks about his political accomplishments and personal demons." Over on ABC's Good Morning... continue reading
1. Klein: No 9-11 If Only Clinton "Had Been Free to Fire Freeh"? 9-11 Ken Starr's fault? On NBC's Meet the Press, after endorsing Bill Clinton's disgust for Ken Starr ("He makes a very strong case for Starr's abuse of power") and agreeing with Clinton's view of himself more as victim than perpetrator ("My feeling is, that in the end on all this stuff he's more sinned against than sinner"), Time magazine's Joe Klein gave credibility to Clinton's claim that but for the Lewinsky scandal Clinton would have fired FBI Director Louis Freeh, who had supposedly proven incompetent in the... continue reading
1. CBS and NBC Spike, CNN Forgets, Putin Disclosure of Iraq Threat At a press conference on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin disclosed that "after Sept. 11, 2001...the Russian Special Services" passed along to the U.S. how it had "received information that officials from Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States..." Friday's CBS Evening News didn't mention Putin's revelation even though it devoted over two minutes to the debate over any Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship. Dan Rather found more newsworthy how Bill Clinton, in one of "the more compelling passages" in his new book, claimed to have warned President-elect... continue reading
1. Media Suppress Hamilton's Scolding of Misreporting of Iraq-Qaeda The Republican Chairman and Democratic Vice Chairman of the 9-11 Commission on Thursday rejected the media's widespread reporting that the commission's report issued the day before had directly contradicted Bush administration statements about connections between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Yet on Thursday night ABC's Peter Jennings declared that there "continues to be a discrepancy between the commission's findings and the President's on whether al-Qaeda has a link to Saddam Hussein," and CBS anchor Dan Rather repeated how "the commission yesterday said it had found no credible evidence of a quote,... continue reading
1. Nets Pounce on No bin Laden-Saddam Link, But Bush Believed Media The networks pounced Wednesday night on how the 9-11 Commission decided, as CNN's David Ensor put it in echoing the commission's exaggeration of administration claims, "the commission staff report says Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 and backs that up with some evidence." CBS's John Roberts stressed how the commission undermined President Bush, describing the Iraq connection as "one of President Bush's last surviving justifications for war in Iraq." Roberts charged: "The report is yet another blow to the President's credibility." ABC's Terry Moran proposed: "After the... continue reading
1. CBS Celebrates Popularity and Sexiness of Teresa Heinz-Kerry CBS on Tuesday night aired a laudatory profile of Teresa Heinz-Kerry in which Byron Pitts touted her as "both rich and reachable" and trumpeted how she even "bakes brownies for the campaign press corps" while "close friends call her 'Momma T' for her nurturing ways." Pitts claimed that the widow of a Republican Senator became a Democrat only because she was angry over how, as Pitts relayed as if it were beyond dispute, Democratic Senator Max Cleland "lost re-election in a bitter campaign when Republicans attacked his patriotism." Pitts offered no... continue reading
1. Jennings Questions Accuracy of Ashcroft's Terror Plot Warnings After all the media kvetching over the failure to connect the dots pre-9/11 you'd think that journalists would resist undermining high government officials who act on the side of caution to prevent a potential mass murder of civilians. But not ABC's Peter Jennings, who on Monday night, after noting how Attorney John Ashcroft announced a Somalian man had been charged with plotting to place a bomb in an Ohio shopping mall, gratuitously added: "Over the last three years Mr. Ashcroft has made several dramatic announcements about terrorist plots in the U.S.,... continue reading
1. If Any Talk of Reagan on Rushmore, Koppel Promises Media Attack A prediction or a threat? As the plane carrying the late President Ronald Reagan arrived back at Point Mugu Naval Air Station on Friday afternoon, Ted Koppel made it clear he was appalled at the suggestion that Reagan was the "greatest President of the 20th century," complaining that would mean "hopscotching him past Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt." Koppel predicted, or threatened, that if Reagan's "supporters try to raise to him to the very heights there, and perhaps find a place for him on Mount Rushmore," that... continue reading
1. Jennings Delivers Liberal Cliches on Reagan and Taxes and Blacks ABC's Peter Jennings just can't let a moment pass without pointing out how Ronald Reagan was not popular with African-Americans. On Thursday's Good Morning America, Jennings delivered liberal cliches as he asserted that at the end of Reagan's presidency "a great many people thought he'd made the wealthy wealthier and had not improved life particularly for the middle class, and there were just occasional intrusions yesterday of the divisiveness which was evident during his presidency, particularly in the African-American community, which felt that Ronald Reagan had not given it... continue reading